Andy's Adventure
by Soldier Boy
Summary: A Fallout oneshot. A desert dweller's adventure in a long abandoned vault.


I peeked my head around the mouth of the cave, quickly drawing it back in as bullets impacted around it. The stupid gangers can't even aim. The twelve of 'em outside'll still be enough to do me in though. By the way, my name's Andy. So anyway, I'm trapped in a cave full of radscorpions, and the only way out (that I know of) is guarded by a dozen pissed-off gangers. Let's recap the last ten or so minutes. I was doing my thing out here at my spot (there's a radscorpion nest somewhere down there and since I'm a 'scorp hunter, well...), collecting some venom sacs and armour plates (for body armour). I was checking a bone pile for anything useful when I heard some noise outside. I went and looked, and saw the gangers gun down a full family of five. Needless to say, they were NOT happy to have witnesses. So now they want to kill me.

Fortunately, they're too scared of the 'scorps to come in. For now. Well only one way to go. I light one of my flares and start heading farther into the cave. I usually don't go much farther than 200 meters back, the 'scorps to that point are smaller, about the size of a dog. Easy kills, spear through the braincase. Their venom sacs good, but their plates are worthless. I've never gone farther than 500 meters back. Past there, the path's too twisted and there's too many 'scorps. The big ones. Don't get me wrong, they're slow and all, but they pack a wallop. Their claws'll cut through body armour like butter, and their venom? Oh boy. So I wander for a while. I got lucky; I didn't find any large groups. I just dodge their attacks and stab'em through the top of their head with my spear. Easy. I keep moving deeper into the cave, munching on some smoked 'scorp as I went.

Man was I lost. I saw a tiny light ahead, barely visible, even after I dropped my flare and walked ahead of it. When I returned to where the flare was, and ran a weapons check. I slung my spear and felt my knife, ensuring it was still attached to my armour, inverted on the left front of my breast piece. Both my frag grenades were secure in my pant's left cargo pocket and my Rangemaster rifle and my 10mm pistol were fully loaded with a round in the chamber. I unholstered my pistol (it being the best weapon to use with a flare in one hand), and flicked the safety off. I neared the short passage leading to the source of the dull light and threw the flare in, switching immediately to a two-handed grip on my 10 mil. Nothing happened, maybe it's safe. Maybe. I cautiously walked into the cavern. It was coated with luminescent fungi. As I picked-up my flare, I realized how cold it was in there. I pulled my cloak tight around myself, dropping the flare in a puddle in the process. My eyes adjusted to the gloom as I tried to relight my flare, and I noticed a funny pattern behind the fungus along one wall.

I finally got the flare relit (waste not, want not) and walked over to it. As I looked closer, I realized that the wall wasn't covered with fungus, it was DESIGNED to look like fungus. Weird. There was a keypad next to it. I idly tapped keys as I considered what to do. Diane back at paradise Hole would probably be able to crack it, no sweat. But I'd still need to get out and then find this place again. Pretty big ifs.

Suddenly the door opened. I must have hit the right sequence. What are the odds?

And the door, what a door! The plug was over a foot of solid steel, it popped outwards and then rolled to the side effortlessly on toothed tracks. As is opened, it released a hiss, the door was airtight. Nice. There outta be some good loot in here. So I walked in. There was a short passage, maybe 20 feet, between the outer door and the inner door. I passed a locker set into the wall near the end containing six flares that looked in my pack.

The inner door was much easier to operate. Just turn the crank and the door slid open. The other side was a sight that will stay with me until my dying days.

Skeleton remains were everywhere, their clothes partially preserved, but every ounce of flesh gone. As I looked at the corpses, the cause of death was obvious. The clean break of the bones, the pattern of the wounds, only one thing in the wastes attacked like that. Radscorpions. But how did they get in here?

I searched the remains only finding two things of interest. The first I found of the on the body of someone wearing what I suppose at one time was a lab coat, they were wearing it, a Pip-Boy. I knew what one was because Diane had a broken one in her shop and I had asked her about it. I strapped it onto my wrist and flipped the power switch. Nothing happened for several seconds. Just as I was about to take it off and toss it, the screen lit with a faint glow.

"Welcome to the Personal Information Processor, PIPboy 2002. Current memory corrupt. Formatting...Purge complete. Have a nice day."

Oh well. I probably didn't want whatever was on it anyway. The other thing I found of interest was on the body of a guard near the elevator shaft. His armour was cut, slashed, and dented in so many places it was worthless. A shame too, it looked nice. He was surrounded by a pile of empty plastic 12-gauge shells. Clutched in his hand was a well-made sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. I grabbed it and checked the load. Two empty shells in the chambers. I popped them out and stowed it in my backpack.

I took a swig of water as I walked around, none of the bodies had anything else of use though. I took a right and stopped in front of a console. It was busted, but had a holodisk in it, which was now in my possession. To my left was a door and a window. I looked in the window first, just to be safe. All clear. Just some beds and another locker set into the wall. The linens on the beds were all rotten.

It was obviously some kind of an infirmary, judging from all the various implements scattered around, all of them rendered useless by age. I opened the door, still holding my pistol at the ready. The only thing of interest in the room was that locker, so I moved to it. A good jerk and it came open. Jackpot. I recognized the contents immediately. Two hard plastic cases about 6"x4"x3/4", and three brown vacuum sealed pouches about 5"x5". I checked the cases first, ensuring the contents were undamaged, same with the pouches. I had just found a dozen stimpacks and three super-stimpacks. And they were military issue, the good stuff.

I looked around some more, but that was all the good stuff on this floor. I walked to the elevator and pried the doors open. Of course the elevator wasn't there. I lit a flare and dropped it down the shaft. It only went about 2 dozen feet down, not far enough that I couldn't reach it with my trusty rope.

I tied my rope off, clenched a flare (by the unlit end) in my teeth and holstered my pistol, climbing down the rope by the strobing light of the flare. About halfway down, I realized there was another door in the wall. I had almost given up on trying to open it (there was no way I could get enough leverage swinging from a rope), when I noticed a small button recessed into the side of the door frame. I hit it, and the hydraulics hissed as their pressure was release, causing the doors to spring open. I swung in, the weight of my pack almost making me land on my face.

I stumbled a few steps and ended-up face-to-mandible with a very large and very angry radscorpion. It slashed at me with it's claw but I dodged inside of it's swipe. I drew my knife, it being the easiest weapon to ready. I stabbed down on it's skull, my knife impacting against it's carapace. Fuck! This one's got thicker armour that most. I juked to my right, barely avoiding a gleaming stinger the size of a tow hook. I angled my knife and stabbed at it's torso. The scorp' drew back, pulling my knife with him.

The distance he put between us in that split second was enough for me to draw my spear, still holding the flare in my mouth. The scorpion rushed me, and I thrust my spear through his mouth. The scorpion's body just dropped, his legs splayed to the side, twitching. I drew back my spear and hit it on the head again, this time penetrating the braincase. Then I took my knife back, using it to carefully remove the venom sac from the tail. As I put away my spear and knife, I noticed, there were fewer bodies here. From the positioning, it looked like they were trying to get out. If radscorpions were coming in, why leave and go outside where there's more scorpions? Why not just go deeper? Doesn't make sense. Oh well. I continued to look around. This level appeared to be living quarters.

There wasn't much in there. I grabbed a couple of shiny things out of some drawers mainly. At the end was a mechanical room, complete with a generator. I examined it in the flickering light from the flare. I'm no mechanic, but after several minutes of prodding, I figured out the problem. At some point, it looked like the system had taken a massive shock that had fused a couple of the breakers in the open position. I managed to free them and put them back in the closed position, receiving a nasty shock on the last one. The generator sputtered, once, twice, three times, then thrummed to life. The lights flickered on, nearly blinding me for a minute or so. My eyes finally adjusted to the bright, blue-tinged halogen bulbs. As I walked out, I notice a plastic first aid kit hanging on the wall. It was much nicer than mine. Switch.

I walked back to the elevator, noticing the climbing rungs recessed into the shaft. So I climbed up, untied my rope, coiled it, stowed it and climbed all the way back down. I picked up my other flare and extinguished it, putting away to relit later. I pulled my pistol, ready for anything and opened the door of the shaft.

Clear. It opened to a hallway, two rooms to my left. Beyond those, a hallway going to the left and right. The first room on my left had no door. It was as if one had never been installed. It just wasn't there. The room looked like a lounge or something, but anything that wasn't nailed down had been thrown against the opening as a barricade.

I moved some of the stuff out of the way and managed to squeeze in. Apparently their barricade wasn't very effective. Again, bodies everywhere, the bones and remains of their clothing exhibiting radscorpion attack marks. I quickly reflected on how much it must have sucked to be them. Oh well. Nothing of interest in here.

The next room seemed to be some kind of storage room, filled with cabinets and footlockers. I picked through them. Mostly just scientific stuff. I took a geiger counter (very useful in the wastes) and a couple of other items I though Diane might like. This was too easy. The lights in the hallway were busted so the lighting wasn't the best, but I decided to save my flares.

As I stood in the semi-dark I thought I was hallucinating for a minute. The ground was moving. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized that the ground was covered in THOUSANDS of tiny 'scorps, no bigger than my thumb. Thank God my books are well-made and come up to my mid-calf. The baby 'scorps didn't seem to care that I was in their midst, they just kept streaming from my left to my right.

'Let's see where they're goin'.' I thought.

So I followed them, I turned right. There were two doors on my right, and the 'scorps were heading into the last one. So I checked the first room. Banks and banks of computers, some of them even working, as well as a full-sized wall locker in the back. Now, I'm a simple man with simple needs. I checked the locker first. It didn't want to open, so I hit the lock with the butt of my rifle. It crumbled. I looked inside and almost cried.

It must have been some kind of security cache. Ammo, an AK-112, and an unused, mint-condition suit of combat armour, MINE. I quickly stripped out of my 'scorp plate armour, strapping to the outside of my pack and put on the combat armour. I adjusted the armour and put my cape on, it'd help with camouflage back in the wastes. I emptied all the pockets of my former armour, stowing the items in my new armour. It had a lot of pockets. Next, an AK-112, fully-loaded. The perfect weapon for the wastes, simple, durable, reliable, and automatic. Perfect. And the ammo. Loads of it. The lifeblood of the wastes. Eight 30 round magazines of 5mm, some .223 and 10mm, and a box of 00 buck shells.

I loaded the sawed-off and put it back in my pack. I removed my .223 clips from the holders, replacing them with the 5mm magazines. The .223 rifle was strapped over the top of my ruck, behind my bedroll. I put the spare ammo in my ruck too. There was a cardboard box under the boxes of ammo. I peered closer and read the label.

'Mark 72 Grenades, Plasma'.

I tore open the box, eagerly expecting a great find. One grenade. An entire box to hold one grenade. Damn you all. Oh well, better than nothing. Then I started to examine the computers. Now I'm no expert with these things, but after about fifteen minutes I managed to find some interesting data and copy some files to the Pip-Boy.

Apparently this place was a vault, Vault 32 to be exact. It was setup to research the effects of World War III on the flora and fauna of the area. Interesting. Not. I waded back into the hall, tiny crunching noise emanating from beneath my boots. Only one door left. Wow. A giant lab.

A big green box was on the wall next to the door. I wiped some of the dust off of it and undid the clasps. Mother load. Four REAL antidotes, made by real scientists, in a real lab, packaged in an auto-injecting syringe. The panel in the back was loose, so I pried it off with my knife. Someone had hidden a psycho back here. Now, I don't do drugs, but I have no problems selling the ones I find.

The lab turned a corner, the trail of 'scorps following it. I walked along it, taking a few interesting trinkets for Diane. As I turned the corner, I suddenly found out where all the 'scorps were going. Out. A large whole, four or five feet wide and about the same high had been lovingly placed in the wall, the baby scorpions streaming out of it into the cavern. Strangely enough, it looked as if the hole was made from the inside out. Hmm.

So I turned around and decided to explore the one turn I hadn't taken. I backtracked through the lab and walked down the hallway. There was a room full of busted computers to my right and a dark room to my left. I walked in without lighting a flare. Good thing too, the place must've opened up into an underground pocket of natural gas or something, but for some reason it just stayed in that room.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I had found the source of the scorpions. The entire room, floors, walls, and ceilings were coated with eggs, all in various stages of maturation. That kinda freaked me out. I slung the AK and drew the shotgun to go to work, but thought better of it. I walked out the door, slightly disoriented by the fumes and took about thirty paces before Incoming face-to-face with the BIGGEST radscorpion in existence.

This thing was at least thirty feet from head-to-tail. Apparently momma wasn't happy to have me barging in. I fired both barrels of the shotgun into it's face. It wasn't even fazed. It returned the favor by spraying me in the chest with something from it's tail. I took off running for the hole in the wall, the scorpion in close pursuit. I only stopped to throw a lit flare into the hatchway, which exploded spectacularly, throwing debris everywhere. Mama was still chasing me, gaining actually. So with a heavy heart I threw my new plasma grenade.

It was AWESOME. A brilliant green flash and I was blown about ten feet down the hall. When I looked up, the entire front half of momma was just gone. Vaporized. Poof. Well, THAT was enough excitement for one day. My chest felt kinda warm, so I looked at the breast plate. HOLY SHIT! That stuff momma sprayed was eating it away! I got that armour off at a high rate of speed and returned to my normal 'scorp plate armour. So I exited the vault, never to return (I hope). I eventually found my way out, at a several miles from where I entered the caves. I'd lost the two best items I'd found, the armour and the grenade, but at least I wasn't empty handed. I wonder how much Diane'll gimme for all this crap I snaked.


End file.
